Parents' Guide to Coastal Elites

The need to vent is absolutely understandable, especially at a time when most of the country is coping with anxiety about the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. The five monologues in Coastal Elites each feel like the type of venting on social media or in family group texts, but without nearly as much emotional depth. The film is clearly a satirical attempt to address the isolation and anger many have felt these past months. But it goes about it by building stereotypical characters and having them rail against even more stereotypical straw men. Nothing feels drawn from real life; each monologue is a stitched-together series of surface-level reactions to news headlines. The writing plays out wish-fulfillment scenarios, like running away with a bully's MAGA hat or someone's lifelong Republican father turning liberal, but if offers superficial suggestions for enduring the actual anxiety and trauma it imagines its audience is going through. Instead, Coastal Elites was seemingly created to be cheered along with, rather than offering a catharsis that drama of this magnitude demands.